By Omar L. Gallaga
Special to the American-Statesman
“He would stay up all night and write songs. He would go to South by Southwest and start putting songs on everyone’s windshields. We didn’t want him to go into music, we wanted him to go into medicine or engineering.”
That’s Shobhna Kotecha, the Austin mother of Oscar-nominated songwriter Savan Kotecha, describing her son and his achievements since he was a Westwood High School student in the 1990s.
Things worked out with music, and instead of practicing medicine or working for a engineering-heavy firm like IBM, Savan will instead this week be part of Sunday s 93rd Academy Awards, helping put together a pre-recorded performance of “Husavik (My Hometown),” the nominated song he wrote for the Netflix movie “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” The performance will be filmed in the actual town of Húsavík, Iceland, that the song is based on.